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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Tamar’s book provides a great introduction to the many tools at your disposal, and a quick and dirty guide about how to implement them, without getting too technical - perfect for job seekers.

Tamar’s basic primer for social marketing first describes what social media really is, many of the major tools, how to participate and proper etiquette of the social web. The New Community Rules gives some great lessons in the right way to introduce yourself to a new connection on social networks, how to leverage that new connection for maximum effect, and how to ask for an introduction.

Yeah, yeah ... I know you THINK you know the right ways to do it, but as the recipient of 50-100 introduction requests each day, I can tell you that most of you (something like 95% of you) do it wrong. It’s a good thing that I’m not picky about who I connect to (with a network of over 22M connections, how could I be picky?), but many of the people job seekers try to connect to ARE picky ... very picky. Say the wrong thing and you’re trashed or worse - IDK’d (marked as I don’t know ... the social networking equivalent of spam).

Most of you could learn a lot from Tamar’s lessons and find that you’ll get more connections and introductions.

Beyond etiquette, “The New Community Rules” defines the major types of social media, and the main players in each. Many job seekers know about Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, but there are dozens of tools out there that can help you in your job search. Tamar gives a quick guide to each, so you can decide which ones can help you, and how to get started quickly.

“The New Community Rules” gives advice like “ ... if you were at a party, would you ask everyone in the room to help you find a job?”. Tamar advises to treat people online in the same way you would in real life.

While some of this book is more directed to small business - just skim over that part. The parts that are relevant to job seekers make the book worthwhile. For instance, “The New Community Rules” shows you things like:

How to monitor your market on the web: If you’re a job seeker, your market is the job market for your industry or function. You’ve set up searches for jobs on Monster & CareerBuilder already. Wouldn’t it be valuable to set up searches for mentions of industry/function on the entire web, including mentions in blogs, forums, comments, and social networks - all in the same place, and have it emailed to you?

Reputation Management: What are people saying about you on the web? If people aren’t saying anything about you, how can you get them to start making positive comments? What if people are saying negative things about someone else who shares your name?

Why you should blog: It’s more important for job seekers than small businesses and it’s easier too. How can you get a blog up and running in an hour, even if you hate writing?

Why Twitter is relevant to your search? Twitter is hugely discounted by most job seekers and it’s gaining in relevance very quickly as it’s gotten indexed to Google, Yahoo & Bing and as jobs are often being posted to Twitter BEFORE the job boards - because Twitter is free (and because it’s indexed to search engines).

How to use Social News to build your reputation and expertise: If you blog, Social News sites can amplify your message and your findability. If you’re not blogging, Social News sites will help you build your reputation (but not as much as blogging will).

“The New Community Rules” is worth a read by job seekers who aren’t social media experts and is simple enough for those who are just sticking their toe into the social media waters for the first time. If you have under 1K connections on Linkedin, don’t manage groups, have fewer than 300 Twitter followers and don’t have an active blog ... and you want to try some tactics to stand out in your job search - this book is for you.

Find “The New Community Rules: Marketing On The Social Web” on Amazon.

Disclosure: While Tamar was kind enough to send me a copy of her book to review, I’m not receiving any affiliate commissions or compensation for sales of this book (That make you happy, FTC?).